Spend less time sitting in front of screen? my system requires lots of waiting for signals

@forextrex
Do you have well defined trading system?
If you dont then dont trade
If you do then why dont you write an EA which will execute trading for you.
I run many EAs and they do trade even when I sleep.
Thus I can diversify risk trading different time frames, broker, strategies, pairs…

I am not a hobby trader, Forex trading is my profession, so I like to spend here more than 8 hours in a day! In addition, my trading strategy is Price Action, which one works in all kind of trading instrument.

Hi Tommor!
Thanks for the post! :slight_smile:
This question of day-trading v. multiday/week trading would indeed be a useful topic for discussion, and I think there have been threads about this before, but whether it belongs here or not, I don’t know :slight_smile:

Whilst I wouldn’t be surprised if many starters did fail after just a few months of day-trading, I am not so sure that it is inevitable or simply due to being “daytrading” per se. Personally, I think day-trading is very intensive and demands a strict discipline, sharp concentration, and an ability not to rationalise moves! The benefit, of course, is that one is trading when one wants to and is flat whenever not trading. Day trading does not need to mean all day. I tend to ignore Mondays and Fridays, and even on Tues -Thurs I only regularly focus on 3-4 hours of NY time, unless there is something special happening at other times.

Perhaps the biggest difficulty with day-trading is knowing when not to trade! The tolerance regarding entry and exit is very tight and there is a strong benefit from pre-empting the next move rather than reactively chasing the market. Either way, I agree that it can be fraught with danger and an inexperienced beginner can lose a lot very quickly - and destroy confidence.

On the other hand, I could imagine there are also difficulties of a different kind for a beginner setting out to trade, say, daily charts. Would you not agree that, for example, sensible stop positions can inevitably mean big potential losses which may be difficult to justify with a very small equity and I am not sure how much education one would get from watching just one position for many days?

I realise that there is a lot more to be said about daytrading, swingtrading and positioning. There are pros and cons with all of them. But maybe the common denominator with all three approaches is that success is more likely to depend on one’s own dedication and willingness to study and learn as well as a readiness to devote at least the same degree of time and effort to it as one would to any other profession?

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Granted there are many styles of day-trading. But that emphasises the distinction that I say exists between day-trading and trading, and that new day-traders don’t see. Day-trading isn’t simply multi-day trading speeded up or with the over-night or weekend gap risks taken out.

It does happen that long-term traders are often too under-capitalised to make it work, so they end up over-leveraged and with way too deep risks from their initial stop-losses, so they get wiped out too. But this is just another way that day-trading sucks in the under-prepared.

The industry amplifies this issue by emphasising day-trading for new traders. As an experiment I have just Googled “want to trade forex” to test whether this bias exists. The first entry bar the ads is from Nasdaq of all people! They say “True 24-hour access is a major advantage that the Forex market has over equities and futures—it eliminates weekday overnight risk for traders”. They then go on to talk about the % price moves per day that can be profitable for leveraged traders. None of this excludes multi-day trading, but almost everyone would take it as an endorsement of day-trading - probably the hardest way to make money in the markets.

New day-traders may indeed have the personality to learn the job. But most don’t and few survive long enough anyway. The best health warning ever for new traders must be don’t day-trade until you can trade.

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Bob day trading

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Now @tommor

one should get stuck right into your generic bull that has placed no value to the OP question. But indeed the wise and articulate words of @anon46773462 call for calm. Plus I have mellowed out and can’t be bother.

It is grossly naive to assign “failure” to a particular style and change the individuals trading plan to a format that you may be more comfortable with. People fail in this game because they are lazy, greedy, incapable of original thought and not accepting responsibility for their trade decisions. Got nothing to do with what style they wish to adapt.

@forextrex has indicated he/she has developed a style that works for them and looking for advice on how to face the challenges he/she has.[quote=“FOREX.com, post:12, topic:113327”]
Many trading platforms can send alerts to your phone/email when your conditions are met.
[/quote]

These are the kind of advice the OP needs to hear that can help solve his/her challenges.

This bull does not help in any form or manner’[quote=“tommor, post:20, topic:113327”]
I’m going to post as often as I can manage what I believe to be good advice as to better ways of doing it.
[/quote]

I think you need to reassess your use of drugs as a form of artistic expression.

As I said early bro, sometimes to think outside the box means thinking inside the box. You certainly don’t have a clue to what I’m talking about.

And one final thought, I wish no-one to trade like me, it’s crazy and insane but it works for me!

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When newbies ask about Day Trading they are generally referring to scalping.

Some of you experienced traders have to remember your mindset when you started FX. This is the main reason as a newbie I stayed away from the 4 hour and Daily TF’s. Estimating market direction was a major challenge, so getting it wrong was a huge amount of pips and time wasted.
Whereas 15min, 5min even 1min TF scalping, although not hugely profitable is a great way to learn the flow of the markets using micro lots and small TP and SL positions.

Swing trading is possibly the next discipline after scalping. But it does require reasonable knowledge of support and resistance or reliance on Indicators such as the CCI or RSI (amongst others). It’s more profitable than scalping but with all the whipsawing and choppiness in price action these days a winning position can turn into a losing one within a matter of a few candles. Perfect example is the USD Crosses in the last few hours, huge retracements in a very short time. I think a lot of newbies get scorched a few times ST and resort back to scalping.

Micro lot Day Trading is also the only real way to test your emotions under financial duress. Demo trading while great for understanding trading strategies, risk management and your platform behaviour are very useful, for most traders, it doesn’t test your emotional behaviour when a position goes against you.

Back to the OP, use the RSI indicator (5 -15min Chart) set to Period 14 (or 20 for smoothing), High 72, Low 28 and buy when the RSI crosses up through (from below) the 28 or down (from above) through the 72. It’s probably 75%-80% effective in getting into a trade when the price has exhausted its momentum in a particular direction. No secret, all over YouTube…
(I coded an EA that opens trades with this criteria and an alarm that yells “Show me the Money” so crass…)

Set the indicator up and look back through your charts and watch future price movements when the above conditions occur. Simple but can be very effective on all time frames.

I only scalp for 2-3 hour sessions due to the strict discipline & sharp concentration that is required.

Really good fun read, cheers _bob.

I think you’d better stop reading my posts if they cause you distress. I don’t mean to but I’ve got a feeling I’m going to.

But surely, Tommor, this is emphasising the benefit of retaining positions overnight on weekdays? since there is a continuous market and little chance of gaps over stop levels? Isn’t this then encouraging considering trades on longer than an intraday basis?

Enough comments have already been made about Fosters compared to other Aussie beers, so we’ll only point out that they’re called prawns, not shrimp, in Australia. :wink:

FOREX > XXXX

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Wow, quite a spirited debate.

@_bob
Thanks for your constructive advice. Also you are correct I’m now testing a strategy that I feel has some promise(consistent profits) , being a “Beginner Questions” thread I feel that it is appropriate here. Everybody has their own strategy and I wanted to explore my approach.

@FOREX.com, @togr,

After manually verifying and refining my strategy. I am now ready to partially automate the process.I’m using MT4 and trying different EAs with push notifications to my phone via the app. But the issue with the EAs I’ve used is that they are pretty buggy. ie getting the alerts late or when the signal has already passed and continually getting alerts after signal was triggered. Being a newbie I am still getting familiar on how to get these various programs to work. So when I refine my system to a point that I’m satisfied with, I could potentially work on developing my own EA. But at this point I still would like to assess the charts before entering the trade but with partial automation.

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Depends which way you look at it. The 24hr market does eliminate morning gaps due to an open past your stop-loss, leading to execution beyond your stop order level. But it doesn’t eliminate over-night risk - the stop can still get hit while the trader sleeps - something that doesn’t happen with stocks, which is where the new forex trader’s previous experience will be, if they have any. Once they understand that simple thing, the obvious conclusion is to close all positions before bed-time - hence the emphasis on % gains per day.

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Since your goal at this point is only to test the alert system, not a particular EA, try testing on a demo account with a simple EA like the Moving Average one that comes pre-installed with MT4.

You mentioned the alerts have been arriving to you late. Is this because of a significant delay in delivery or because your window of opportunity to act is particularly small? (minutes rather than hours).

Also, is your email inbox set for push notifications on your phone? If not, it may only be checking for emails periodically rather than sending you notifications instantly when a new email arrives.

In regards to continually getting alerts, make sure the “Disable alert once hit” box is checked.

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You mean that, the multiple Oscar winning flick, "The Shrimp On The Barbie’ is a misnomer. Egad, next you will tell me that XXXX is Lolly water :grin:

The Ever Intraday Trading From Day One VIPER

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@forextrex
My idea was not to use EA to alert you, even though this can be easily done with paid SMS send service.
My idea was if you have trading system let the EA trade for you.
Moreover with EA you can run backtest to see what are th flaws.

No I find that a few candles have already past . There must be some sort of delay due to the computer being in some sort of rest state. I changed my pc’s battery’s Power options to “Do nothing” from when put computer to sleep . But I was reading somewhere that mt4 has continually write data to the hard drive but this setting has to be changed somewhere, total speculation though.

is better to get sms via email? rather than push setting under the options menu?

How’d you get to that screen, is under the specific EA you are using or a general m4 Setting?

Thanks in Advance

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@togr

That’s the next step after refining my system more.

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Checking your computer settings is a good idea. If you decide to implement this approach full time it may even be worth running your trading platform on a virtual private server (VPS). Then you don’t have to worry about keeping your computer running and connected 24 hours a day during the trading week.

Many forex brokers offer a free VPS to accounts that meet minimum balance and/or trading volume requirements. (For example, with FOREX.com, you must maintain a minimum of $5,000 in your account and execute at least 10 round trip mini lots or the equivalent per calendar month.) Otherwise you can subscribe for a VPS for anywhere from $20 to $200 per month depending on your exact memory and processing requirements.

Better still: try installing the MT4 mobile app on your phone. Tap the chat icon in the app to get your phone’s unique MetaQuotes ID. You can then plug that into your MT4 desktop platform by going to Tools > Options > Notifications.

You will find these options in the window that pops up when you try to add any EA to a chart including Moving Average.

@TradeViper do you have a copy?

Incidentally, there are lots of gems in this Wikipedia entry: Shrimp on the barbie - Wikipedia

I prefer long-term trading. I enter deals based on the principle that if I miss 20-30 points, then it’s ok))